DjangoStonereaver:Why the Hell is Discovery Magazine running a piece of creationist pseudo-science?

You might need to read more closely.

The article isn't claiming that God actually took the human bacula (instead of a rib) to make Eve, and that this surgery was then mysteriously inherited in some Lamarckian fashion on the grounds that men clearly have all their ribs but lack a bacula.

The article is proposing that the myth has been misinterpreted, that the myth was not created as a mythical explanation of the non-missing rib, which makes no sense, but that the myth was created as a mythical explanation of the missing bacula. Ancient myths are full of mythological "just so" stories about the natural world.

The article is about where the myth came from, not where the bacula went to.

czetie:Doc Batarang: czetie: The huge missing piece in this story is this: Did the Hebrews actually know that humans lack a baculum that other mammals do have? Is there any evidence that they had such an interest in anatomy?

Furthermore, even if they did know, is there any evidence that they would expect humans to have a baculum just because dogs do? Unlike modern biologists, they had no reason to think that dogs and humans are distantly related. Without that connection, this may be a purported answer to a question nobody was asking.

Well that's on you, not on them actually. Ancient people spent far more time looking at the insides of people and animals then you or I have any reason to. The assumption that they didn't know about physiological structures within humans and animals is absurd because they saw it personally on a frequent basis while the knowledge of anatomy that the average modern person has is mainly academic. One doesn't need to know anything about science to make coherent statements about the world which are both objectively and culturally significant, which is how humans have been thinking about things for 99% of our history so far. You're not wrong, but also asking a question which the ancient Hebrews wouldn't need to ask for themselves.

If anything is absurd here, it's that response. What a bunch of hand-wavy "wisdom of the ancients/connected to nature" nonsense.

Just because people "looked at the insides of people and animals" doesn't mean they knew anything about those insides, what they did, or what they were for (beyond which parts are good eating). Ancient people variously thought that the liver was the seat of intelligence, the brain was primarily a blood-cooling device, and the entrails of birds predicted the future.

People have seen humans and animals bleed for all of our history, and for much more than 99% of that history had no idea why. Most ancient peoples thought that blood vessels carried air around the body, and that the blood was larg ...

The second is very instructive as it mentions rules and guidelines for sacrificing various animals as well as mentioning surgery and that there was already a strong tradition of understanding Human anatomy before Talmudic times. A source like this one will also show you the depth and breadth of their possible medical diagnoses along with a strong connection between ancient Hebrew medical practice and Egyptian and Assyrio-Babylonian medical practices.

Of course, none of this is a perfect understanding of what all goes on inside a human body. That wasn't my point at all. The point was that even beside a list of touted erroneous beliefs, the practices and ideas of ancient medicine were still culturally relevant and results oriented. The understanding posited by this article doesn't require an in-depth knowledge of evolutionary processes, only an observed understanding of the differences between humans and various animals. The result is a culturally meaningful metaphor embedded within the story which illustrates that novel observation.

Your position is just a generic chronological bias. Follow the links and read enough to place the discussion article in its correct context.

Doc Batarang:czetie: The huge missing piece in this story is this: Did the Hebrews actually know that humans lack a baculum that other mammals do have? Is there any evidence that they had such an interest in anatomy?

Furthermore, even if they did know, is there any evidence that they would expect humans to have a baculum just because dogs do? Unlike modern biologists, they had no reason to think that dogs and humans are distantly related. Without that connection, this may be a purported answer to a question nobody was asking.

Well that's on you, not on them actually. Ancient people spent far more time looking at the insides of people and animals then you or I have any reason to. The assumption that they didn't know about physiological structures within humans and animals is absurd because they saw it personally on a frequent basis while the knowledge of anatomy that the average modern person has is mainly academic. One doesn't need to know anything about science to make coherent statements about the world which are both objectively and culturally significant, which is how humans have been thinking about things for 99% of our history so far. You're not wrong, but also asking a question which the ancient Hebrews wouldn't need to ask for themselves.

If anything is absurd here, it's that response. What a bunch of hand-wavy "wisdom of the ancients/connected to nature" nonsense.

Just because people "looked at the insides of people and animals" doesn't mean they knew anything about those insides, what they did, or what they were for (beyond which parts are good eating). Ancient people variously thought that the liver was the seat of intelligence, the brain was primarily a blood-cooling device, and the entrails of birds predicted the future.

People have seen humans and animals bleed for all of our history, and for much more than 99% of that history had no idea why. Most ancient peoples thought that blood vessels carried air around the body, and that the blood was largely incidental to the whole business. Only since the mid-17th century have we had any real understanding of the circulatory system. And that's for something as basic, obvious and universal as blood. And yet your theory is that they noticed that animals had a bacula and humans didn't? And your argument in support of that is that "they must have noticed"?

In addition it wasn't until the later Greeks (4th century BCE) that anatomy was even primarily observational rather than speculative. The idea of cutting up dead bodies (or live ones, as Herophilos did) to discover how they worked would have been absolute anathema to ancient Hebrews.

So basically, given the evidence, you are the one making absurd assumptions. So now it's on you, not me nor them. This is the point where you stop flat-out asserting that the Hebrews knew this stuff because obviously they just had to, and either:

(a) actually point to some real evidence that supports your assumptions, i.e. Hebrews knew of the anatomical difference between humans and dogs and that Hebrews thought it significant that there was a difference in this respect between humans and dogs; or

That was actually an interesting theory, and certainly makes the story of Genesis more interesting. That aside, I wonder at which point in the evolution of our species that the bacula started to recede (punny...) until it was eliminated all together? What is the evolutionary advantage to not having one? As the article said, human males rely upon "hydraulics" for erections... maybe I am just out of it, but I am having a hard time thinking of a reason outside of some sort of inconvenience for man.

Oh, the writer of the article really needs to learn to use smaller paragraphs. I hate schlepping through long ones online almost as much as the two-sentences-per-paragraph that other writers use.

The huge missing piece in this story is this: Did the Hebrews actually know that humans lack a baculum that other mammals do have? Is there any evidence that they had such an interest in anatomy?

Furthermore, even if they did know, is there any evidence that they would expect humans to have a baculum just because dogs do? Unlike modern biologists, they had no reason to think that dogs and humans are distantly related. Without that connection, this may be a purported answer to a question nobody was asking.